Mother of sex abuse victim succeeds in campaign to have paedophile priest’s gravestone replaced
IT was a grand gesture to a paedophile priest that came to symbolise how the Catholic Church appallingly treated child sex abuse victims within its own community. But now the mother of a child sex abuse victim has won a two-year crusade.
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IT was a perplexing gesture to a paedophile priest that came to symbolise how the Catholic Church appallingly treated child sex abuse victims within its own community.
Despite dying in jail while serving 10 years for attacking a young altar boy - and fears he abused countless others - Father James Patrick “Jim” Fletcher’s parish feted him in death.
Fletcher, 65, retained the privilege of being buried with a marble headstone in the priests’ section of Newcastle cemetery, on the New South Wales Central Coast, after a lavish funeral service.
For his victims, and their devastated families, the garish, blue coloured gravesite was as offensive as it was devastating.
But after a two-year battle with the Newcastle-Maitland diocese, grandmother Patricia Feenan, 68, has won her one-woman crusade for change.
Fletcher was jailed for abusing her eldest son Daniel, 41.
Mrs Feenan, a widow and mother of four has forced the church to replace it.
She told The Advertiser the current diocese’s Bishop, Bill Wright, supported her request.
“I am pleased they have changed it – it was totally inappropriate because it showed a lack of sensitivity and empathy,” said Mrs Feenan, whose late husband John, 64, was the diocese’s business manager.
“For the other local priests, it was offensive to those who had never been slurred or done anything wrong but had been tarred with the same brush.
“There were a lot of boxes to tick but it should never have happened.”
Her personal win emerged after Fletcher’s former flatmate, Adelaide Archbishop Philip Edward Wilson, was this week sentenced to a 12-month term of imprisonment - likely to be served on home detention from next month.
The disgraced clergyman, 67, will appeal amid intense pressure for him to quit or for Pope Francis to sack him.
He is the highest ranking church official worldwide to be sentenced for such crimes.
Fletcher’s headstone, describing him as a “reverend” and containing a detailed list of his parishes, has been replaced with a simple, brown headstone with just brief details of his birth, ordination and death.
Mrs Feenan, who has written a book called Holy Hell, added: “There has been so much negative publicity about Fletcher somebody would have desecrated it.
“Now, I would never defend Fletcher but the Church would have to explain why it was even presented in that form in the first place. He was a convicted criminal who died in jail.”
Father of five Mr Feenan added: “I think it is a great thing that Fletcher is buried but that it only also says his name and not much else.”
The diocese’s retired bishop, Michael Malone, said he refused Fletcher’s wish to be buried next to his parish church.
Bishop Malone, 78, of Terrigal, north of Sydney, said it was Fletcher’s estate executers who organised the headstone, adding: “There was nothing elaborate about it.”
A Newcastle diocese spokesman said the grave was changed but declined further comment.
